AMID THE TORRENT OF NEWS accompanying the new administration, the short-lived standoff between President Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro came and went before most people could untangle what had happened. The crisis is now resolved, but one detail struck me as particularly revealing: The standoff was sparked when two U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes filled with deportees were turned away from Colombian airspace.

The C-17 is awesome. While not as sleek as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, or as high tech as the B-2 Spirit bomber, or as advanced as the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor, it sends a message of unrivaled American power like no other. Our soldiers practice jumping out of this aircraft, which by itself is cool. But as a cavalry officer who spent a career in and around tanks, the plane’s ability to deliver tons of equipment and supplies—from the 70-ton M1 Abrams tank, to disassembled Apache or Blackhawk helicopters, to huge Multiple Launch Rocket Systems and Patriot air defense platforms to ammunition like artillery rockets and even cruise missiles—directly to forward areas of any battlefield always impressed me and made me grateful for the Air Force, the world’s best rapid delivery service.

On several occasions, I watched this beast land, deliver emergency supplies, and then take off from dirt strips that Army engineers had just constructed hours before, or unload more than 100 multinational paratroopers out of two side doors in a European airborne operation, or dispense tons of humanitarian supplies on repeated trips to a disaster area. When Landstuhl Hospital in Germany became the rear area transfer point during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I watched these planes—reconfigured as flying hospitals, with flight surgeons, flight nurses, and all the high-tech medical care on board—safely conduct those who had been stabilized and deemed ready to make the long flight home.

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The “C” in C-17 stands for cargo, but it does more than carry stuff: It sends a message of power and the American can-do military spirit. With 223 of these behemoths, the Air Force is capable of delivering huge amounts of stuff anywhere in the world on short notice in adverse conditions.

But it’s an expensive aircraft to town and operate. A Boeing 737, the classic workhorse of domestic commercial flights, will have a sticker price of $90 million to $120 million, depending on the model and before discounts for buying in bulk. Boeing also makes the C-17, and depending on the year of production and the state of its continuous upgrades, its cost will range between $220 million and $340 million. A big reason for the price difference? The C-17 sports advanced military avionics, the reconfigurable payload bay, reinforced airframes, various defensive countermeasure systems, and short field/rough runway landing and takeoff capabilities.

Civilian airliners are built for fuel efficiency during cruise flight, often flying at high altitudes for long distances with a significantly lighter passenger load. A 737 uses about 6,000 pounds of fuel per hour for its two jet engines. The C-17, designed to conduct a variety of military operations that stress the airframe, which is required at times to carry exceedingly heavy and sometimes oversized loads, uses four Pratt and Whitney turbofan engines consuming about 20,000 pounds of fuel per hour. The C-17’s multirole function—which prioritizes flexibility and performance in extreme combat environments—also results in more expensive parts and more frequent and intensive maintenance by its crew and supporters compared with civilian airliners, which are optimized to ferry passengers and luggage between airports in favorable conditions. Military transports like the C-17 use engines designed to balance high performance with short takeoff and landing requirements, which all combine to make those aircraft less fuel-efficient and more expensive to maintain compared to the engines on civilian airliners designed for lighter loads and greater cruising efficiency.

So why were these huge military cargo planes that are needed for more demanding missions chosen over plentiful and available passenger planes that are part of the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet for the mission of transporting a relatively small number of passengers to foreign countries? It beats me, though I suspect there was a desire to send a message using the intimidating might of the Air Force.

Given the other news from the new administration over the last few days, a debate over the choice of aircraft for deportations seems trivial. But the choice of aircraft signifies other choices the administrations is making—about government efficiency (or in this case, willful inefficiency); about the image it wants to project to Americans, allies, and partners; and, perhaps most concerningly, about how it sees and may seek to use the armed forces.

The U.S. military has a reputation and an image as being the best in the world. For those who serve, that image means we desire to constantly represent professionalism and the values of our nation. We want to be known as a powerful force that executes our missions with pride even when we must deter or intimidate. In my view, these missions didn’t require military deterrence or intimidation through force—but they did send an unfortunate message to a valuable partner government in Latin America, and they sure did waste a lot of resources.

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